on Wed, May 09, 2001 at 07:17:16PM +0200, Bernard Lang (Bernard.Lang@inria.fr) wrote:
> On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 09:53:46AM +0200, Carlo Daffara wrote:
> > An interesting twist on protection against bad patents:
> > http://www.priorart.org
> >
> > cheers
> > Carlo Daffara
>
> Yes ...
>
> one of the dumbest initiatives of the Hindsight Institute ... and
> apparently endorsed by some prominent members of the community too.
>
>
> The good thing about it is that one has to pay to use it ... 20
> bucks is still a lot. So it will probably be ignored.
>
> SWPAT are inherently bad economically (I do not know of any study
> with positive conclusions). Why waste time helping them. It is much
> more useful to maximize insecurity for patent requesters by making
> prior art search difficult. Increasing the cost for patent holders
> actually improves the economic effectiveness of the patent system
> (discouraging weak patents).
>
> And it is totally misleading regarding the way patents works.
> People will use this database to get the good ideas and patent around
> them. Just imagine a new claim and you get a patent on an old idea.
>
> I wish free software "leaders" had carefully discussed the issue
> publicly, and with more experienced patent specialists, before
> endorsing it.
Bernard, I'm not quite clear what your objections are. I'm unable to
access the site at the moment, so if the context lies there, I don't
see it.
Who is hosting the site, who is endorsing it?
Remember, we do not speak with one voice (Karsten says, speaking for the
free software (or is that Open Source) community....).
Cheers.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/http://www.kuro5hin.org